A social experiment turns into a finger-lickin' good time.

After about 2,897,749,287 gazillion pictures of people flashing smiles, middle fingers, and peace or surf's-up signs with Cluckita, we're left with a group of about five or six guys, all stylishly unwashed, with hard faces that exude a we-listen-to-bands-you've-never-even-heard-of vibe.

Cluckita head-butts one guy with disheveled hair and glasses.

"She has chosen you," I say as Cluckita begins to booty-dance in front of him.

"How do you know the chicken is a she?" he asks.

"Because I've seen her vagina," I say, adding a profound question: "What would you rather have sex with — a chicken with a woman's vagina, or a woman with a chicken's vagina?"

He walks away.

Next comes Fernando, the black sheep of the crowd. He looks as if he's in his sixites. Wearing a pale yellow polo shirt and khaki shorts, and armed with a suave, European attitude, he questions what a hen's main reproductive organ is like.

"It's filled with feathers," I say as I pull a piece of chicken from my bucket and hold it up to Fernando's nose, "and it smells like this."

"Yes, that is okay," he says, signifying that a romp with a clucker isn't entirely out of the question.

All fun and fuckery aside, the hard-boiled question remains: Do these people really think this chicken is art?

Sarah, a full-figured woman in her midthirties — whom I meet outside Locust Projects (105 NW 23rd St.), where Clifton Childree's spinning horror-porn/maze called "Dream-Cum-Tru" is on exhibit — has a theory.

"Well, it seems like everyone wants to take your chicken's picture," she says, tying her strawberry-blond hair into a ponytail as a group of thuggish boys gets a group photo with the exhausted pullet. "And when I went to the Louvre a few summers back, all anyone seemed to be interested in doing was taking pictures of themselves posing with the Mona Lisa. So in a sad way ... yes, she's art."